Bulls Continue Winning Ways

[Brad]

Courtesy USF

Bulls Continue Winning Ways

TAMPA, Fla. – Thanks to a solid performance from Kristina Fabris and the team’s defense at the net, the University of South Florida volleyball team cruised to its seventh-straight win of the season with a 3-0 (30-24, 30-24, 30-23) sweep over Texas A&M Corpus Christi Friday night at The Corral.

The Bulls now have a perfect 2-0 record through two days of the Best Western Invitational. USF has a chance to win its second-straight tournament title on Saturday when it takes on George Mason at 5 p.m. The potential championship match will be broadcast live on the Press Pass of GoUSFBulls.com on a pay per view basis.

Currently the Bulls are the only undefeated team in the tournament. UCF has finished play with a 2-1 record, while George Mason is 0-1 and TAMUCC is 0-2. 

Fabris led the team and all players on the court with her all-around performance. The senior posted the only double-double in the match with a 15-kill, 13-dig outing and had a team-high four aces. The Sudbury, Ontario, native only had one attacking error on the night and hit .560.

“To put up a double-double and to put up the numbers she put with one error is just again a strong performance by Kristina,” coach Claire Lessinger said. 

USF (7-1) also relied heavily on its athleticism at the net and that made all the difference in the match. The Bulls were stopping balls at the net all night and finished the contest with 16.0 blocks. The defensive effort quieted the Islanders offense and limited their scoring abilities to only hit .117 on the night.

The opposite rang true for Texas A&M Corpus Christi, who couldn’t slow down the Bulls’ scoring with a presence at the net. The Islanders (3-8) only recorded 2.0 blocks in the match. 

“That is exactly what I kept talking about in timeouts and between games is how impressed I was with our blocking,” Lessinger said. “It wasn’t that we were just having great results, it was that we were really following the game plan and we were disciplined and understood the strategy behind what we were doing. I was just really pleased with the execution on the blocking side.”

Sophomore Jarka Havlickova led the team with 8.0 total blocks and fellow classmate Alli Arbogast tallied 7.0. Freshmen Allie Boaz and Erin Kracl tied their personal bests, posting 5.0 and 4.0 blocks, respectively. Fabris also added four block assists.

Complimenting the defensive effort was a strong offensive attack. The Bulls hit .352 and tallied 44 kills on the night. USF got into a rhythm early in the match and it continued throughout, minimizing errors while putting the ball down when needed. 

“Coming off a match like last night that wasn’t really offensively productive, I was really glad to see our entire team get our offensive going, which made us tough to defend. Then to have our defense do as well as it did was, we were overall great on both sides of the ball.”

[Jamie]

Good thing the cries for the volleyball coach's firing on this board last year were ignored.